Amy Crehore sent me this link today; somehow this Botero’s show escaped me (I was attending the EMetrics Summit in DC when the show opened on October 17th) and I did not know about it - so, decided to go right over to the Marlborough Gallery as I was only 6 blocks away finishing up at the Hilton Hotel with the Ad-Tech Conference.  It was also raining cats and dogs today and the somber, overcast mood seemed fit in with the dark nature of this series of Botero’s art on the atrocity at Abu Ghraib. 

 

The gallery was mostly empty so I had the paintings largely to myself and spent about 20 minutes here.  Here’s my thoughts.  There’s a theme here – Botero is detesting and protesting George Bush’s disastrous foreign policy that led to this…. to Abu Ghraib, and a show nearby, at MOMA, on Manet and the Execution of Maximilian which I will cover in another post.  Social protest is in the air…people are angry, artists are angry ….we’re all angry and blame it …..well, blame it on Bush, because he did this ….. he, George W. Bush, personally stuck his hand up the camel’s nose – as so wonderfully shown in Peter Saul’s portrait of George Bush at Abu Ghraib .

Getting back to Botero, none of the paintings in this show are for sale (the artist is showing the paintings from his private collection).

In this collection of paintings there are common elements – the prison guard rails

appears in most paintings in the gallery show  – as does two naked men – occasionally someone is urinated on and humiliated by a dog or wearing women’s clothes.

What you don’t see is that the oppressors (prison guards) are American Soldiers – it’s not clear who the oppressors are.

The other thing that struck me was how much Botero paints like an old master. His drawings, like the one below, illustrate Botero’s approach to drawing and painting.

 

This prisoner looks like Christ except it’s not.  I liked the paintings, all the paintings – though I got the feeling that there’s not that much difference between one work and the next – it’s all variations of the same painting -done over and over and over again.

I liked the Botero show but I’m not sure I’d go back – yet every painting in the show is a masterpiece.